While sitting on my deck the other night gazing at stars, I noticed a sprinkle coming from the clear sky. Could it be rain?

Rain it was not. I was being “watered” by the neighbor hosing her garden. Maybe I will grow!

The sprinkle reminded me that I intended to write about the elements – their astrological and natural state and how American consumer culture has transformed our relation to the elements.

Natural State

Western astrology is based on four elements and three “modes” which make up the 12 signs of the zodiac. The four elements are: fire, earth, air, and water.

Fire, earth, air, and water – the stuff of life.

Each element has three modes – cardinal (initiating), fixed (sustaining) and mutable (changing).

The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC is focused not on the history of Native American decimation but on living Native Americans and their respect for the earth upon which we live. Native Americans continue their efforts to encourage living in harmony with the elements. The museum is about the past only in the sense that our culture has lost our sensory connection to earth due to the focus on mind distractions and constant indoor living.

Our Tech Gods are busy looking for ways to mimic the natural world including producing meat that doesn’t come from living entities. As Joseph Campbell pointed out, life feeds on life so how will the body respond to feeding on matter that was never alive?

We’ll see.

The scariest disconnection from environment is research into the dimming of the sun’s rays. It’s like we’re a person in the throes of an addiction where we want to try everything to fix ourselves except removing the addiction.

But back to astrology.

American Elements

The American economic system is based on consumerism which is why no vote-loving politician will touch the root cause of our earth/climate issues. We Americans are trapped in a system of our own making and both our livelihoods and retirements depend upon it continuing.

The four elements of American culture are not the basic fire, earth, air and water of the Native American experience. The transformation appears to me like this:

Fire – astrological fire represents the spirit, enthusiasm, self-assertion, and self-expression. Sitting in front of screens all day doesn’t feed the spirit so our replacement is sports. Sports are how we manifest our urge to live in the spirit, to rise to challenges, and to fight enemies. Ancient cultures such as Mayan and Byzantine also had strong focus on sports. As Neptune moves into fire-sign Aries in a couple years, I expect the current vigilantism and violent group activity to increase but will certainly be balanced by the “peaceful warrior” or “spiritual warrior” types. But I also expect lots of confusion about which is which. As I see another explosion on the news, I’ll add “more explosions.”

Earth – astrological earth represents the body, stability, adjusting in the third dimension including following rules, focus on diet and work and traditional ideas of “success.” The Puritan work ethic that keeps Americans busy fosters earth energy and accumulation of goods including large living dwellings. Houses seem to best represent this element. Shelter, of course, is critical for survival on earth yet American homes are some of the biggest in the world, with space for many more than the occupants in living in it. While outdoor living degrades, indoor living continues to improve.

Air – astrological air represents communication, society, interaction, thinking and new experience. Air also moves quickly. Cars seem to best represent our relation to air although fire is also involved with the sense of spirit and power that a car provides. Cars provide identity as well – identity is a strong focus of air signs. Visiting friends and family, shopping and traveling are all made much easier with cars! Victorian-era novels can remind us that socializing was a much slower affair before cars. And bringing home lots of stuff from the store was more difficult as well.

Water – astrological water represents emotional connection (versus air social connection) so is the emotional and imaginative life, inner life, and escapism because one needs to feel unhappy in order to want to escape (air rationalizes away unhappiness; earth ignores it; and fire tries to overcome it). Water also likes everything liquid including stimulants such as coffee and tea and intoxicants such as alcohol. Food and beverage seem to best represent our relationship to water. Notice how much of a convenience store is dedicated to beverages. Food is both earth and water but I’ve assigned it water here because of the American dysfunction with food – it’s rare to see simple enjoyment of food without guilt reactions of some sort. Food is emotional.

Dimming the sun?

Egyptian Pharoah Akhenaten supposedly moved to “monotheism” from “polytheism.” Personally, I believe Akhenaten wasn’t promoting traditional religion of either sort but moving his people toward the source of our energy – the sun – and away from distracting ritual.

Astrology teaches about cycles, polarity and most importantly balance.

Altering the fire element will create imbalance in the other elements (air currents, rain cycles, growing cycles). But I’m guessing that someone out there wants to create a program that aligns the four elements and earn lots of earth energy in the process.

It will be interesting to see who owns the sun dimmer machine.